“We gain a better understanding of the Guardian language, the one we called Destie at first. As we do, we understand more nuances. We discover we have made a mistake, a very bad one.”
Sam felt a flash of dread and his attention instantly went from polite to absolute.
“What mistake?”
“We translated the Guardian command to send a landing party to present an offer. A better translation would have been an offering. In fact, we now know that the boarding party itself was understood to be the offering of appeasement. It is their custom.”
Sam closed his eyes and felt himself sway back and forth for a moment.
“Their custom,” he repeated.
“Yes. We should have seen this. People are dead because of us. Lieutenant Running-Deer who was so considerate to us is dead because of this. AAAAAAAA!” it exclaimed, a flat toneless bark of some emotion Sam could not identify: grief, remorse, guilt, anger.
“aaaaaaaaa!” the Buran infant repeated, as if the unsettling echo in the adult’s voice was not enough.
Sam could hardly untangle his own emotions. He did not try to understand those of the Buran, but whatever part of the reaction was guilt, he thought that part was misplaced.
“Councilor Abanna Zhaquaan, did they make an effort to explain this custom to us before the landing party was sent?”
“No, Captain Samuel Bitka, but they had no reason to think we would be unfamiliar with it.”
“You are mistaken. They had every reason to think it. Those reasons were why they demanded the meeting. They knew we were not from Guardian Space and so could have no understanding of their customs. You were not to blame, my friend. They were.”
“But . . . it was just their custom.”
“Well, we learned one of their customs, the hard way. And then they learned one of ours, also the hard way, so maybe we’re even, although I have to say I don’t feel even.”
“No, not even,” the Buran said. “They were an advanced technological society with no apparent recent experience with war, and so their infrastructure was extremely vulnerable. We destroyed seventeen hundred satellites by direct action, mostly due to the detonation of two nuclear weapons in Destie-Four’s orbital space. Debris continues to disable additional satellites, and will do so for some time, and in so doing we have eliminated their functioning communication infrastructure.
“As near as we can tell, not only communication but aerial travel, all surface cargo transportation, all financial transactions, and all manufacturing have ceased. Many aircraft guided by means of satellite-linked control have crashed. There will be famine and unchecked disease, and there will be riots if they are the sort of people who respond to terror and approaching doom with violence. According to our prisoner every Guardian on the planet was in that underground facility, so we have apparently eliminated their supreme leadership, We have not detected any spacecraft launches, nor any effort to establishing a replacement satellite system, nor any coordinated disaster-relief efforts on the planet surface. None of those things would be possible without a communication system.
“Captain, we may have destroyed a civilization.”
Sam stared at the Buran until he realized his mouth was open. He licked his lips, shook his head.
“Destroyed an advanced space-faring civilization? With one assault transport and a couple missiles?”
“Good morning, sir,” the corporal in charge of the two-Marine guard detail standing outside the stateroom greeted him. Both wore simple khaki shipsuits and had holstered gauss pistols on their hips.
“Good morning, Corporal. How’s our prisoner?”
“Same as always, sir,” she answered, “fuckin’ weird.”
“Got eyes on her?”
She handed Sam her viewer glasses and he studied the alien, more to collect his thoughts than gather information. He might have destroyed an entire civilization a few days ago, or at least started its destruction in train, and now he had to talk to one if its leaders and see if he could persuade her to help them escape. He wasn’t sure where to begin. The alien sat in the small stateroom in a Varoki-configured chair which was still a bit small for her. Her halo was clearly visible in the subdued light if the interior. He handed the viewer glasses back.
“Okay. I’m going in to interrogate her. Crank the light level up a bit.”
The corporal triggered her commlink. “Visitor coming in. Prisoner will remain seated.” Both Marines drew their gauss pistols and held them pointing up, fingers outside the trigger guards, and stepped to either side of the door, out of the immediate line of fire.
“Opening in three, two, one,” the corporal said, and then the pistols came down and level as the door slid open, each guard covering a different half of the stateroom. “Subject is seated, Captain. Clear to enter.”
Sam crossed the threshold into the small stateroom and the door whispered shut behind him.
Sam had seen vid of the Guardian so he knew her general physiology. Being in her physical presence was different and a little intimidating. He wasn’t sure how much of that came from the knowledge of her immortality and how much from her towering height—about two meters thirty. Even with her seated and him standing she didn’t have to bend her neck to look him in the eye.
To his surprise her most striking features were her eyes. Proportionally they were larger than a human’s, more like an owl’s, and of course they never blinked. They were pale gray, nearly the same color as her head feathers, which were small and fine, not much different than flowing hair at first glance. Dr. Däng had told him those eyes could see far into the infrared part of the spectrum. He wondered what else those eyes could see.
Sam wore a clumsy vox-box around his neck and spoke into the clear flexible mask. The vox-box translated his words into Destie and produced a fair approximation of his voice and inflections from its speaker.
“My name is Samuel Bitka and I am captain of this ship. I understand your name is Te’Anna, and Lieutenant Bohannon tells me you are willing to speak with me. Is that correct?”
“Lieutenant Deandra Bohannon,” the Guardian named Te’Anna said, “communications officer. She worries she has insufficient sexual allure to attract a desirable mate. Do you find her sexually alluring?” Her abrupt sentences came in short, clipped packets of words.
Sam worked at not letting his surprise at the question show on his face. The Guardian cocked her head to the side in a gesture he found unsettlingly birdlike. No, all sorts of animals made head movements like that. It must be the feathers that made him think of a bird.
“She is a subordinate,” Sam said. “I try not to think of my subordinates in those terms.”
“That is a custom of your people or just a personal eccentricity?”
“It’s a rule.”
“A rule? And this rule is always obeyed?”
“No rule is always obeyed.”
She studied him for a moment. “But you always obey it, Captain Bitka. Is that your personal eccentricity?”
“One of several,” he answered. “I would like to ask you some questions.”
She made another strange head movement: she tucked her chin down against her chest and then pushed her head forward and tilted it back, stretching her neck.
“Of course. Ask anything you like. I am your prisoner for now.”
For now? Sam decided to let that pass. He looked at his data pad, at the list of questions he wanted to ask, and decided to start with an easy one.
“The leader of the group of Marines which captured you said you made no effort to flee into the complex or avoid capture. He said you appeared to be waiting for them and wanted to be taken.”
“He is very perceptive, this leader,” she said. She raised her right hand and ran her fingertips through the feathers along the side of her face, and he found it a very graceful gesture. Unlike the New People, her fingers were long and shapely, but like them her hand had only three fingers and an opposable thumb. Interesting coincidence, Sam thought. H
e also thought, Well, they may be geniuses when it comes to genetic manipulation, but we’d sure kick their asses in a piano-playing contest.
“Why did you allow yourself to be taken?” he asked.
“I am not sure you would understand,” she answered.
“Try me.”
“I was very bored. You seemed interesting.”
Bored? Sam looked down at his data pad to hide his expression. What sort of being allows herself to be taken prisoner by violent aliens out of boredom? Maybe one who had lived a really long time.
“How old are you?” Sam asked.
“I do not know. I have been alive as long as I remember. Of course, I suppose that is true of any sentient being. But my earliest memories are of myself essentially as I am now, and with the sensation I had always been thus.”
“How long ago was that?” Sam asked.
“Again, I do not know. Three hundred orbits of the world you call Destination Four around its star? Perhaps four hundred? No, come to think of it I have a vague memory of having been elsewhere once. That must have been a very long time ago, as the New People say we have been here with them for over eight hundred orbits. They are more concerned with keeping track of such things than are we. Time is more important to those who have so little. Of course, I may not have come here with P’Daan. I may have come later.”
Destination-Four did one orbit of its star in about 1.3 Earth years. That placed the Guardians here at least a thousand years ago.
“You came here from elsewhere, so there must be other Guardians. Other inhabited worlds in your . . . I don’t know what to call your civilization.”
“We call it the Realms, or at least we used to. Perhaps they still do. There are other worlds, other Guardians. Other Guardians come and visit sometimes, not often. I do not know how many Guardians are still alive, I would say in the thousands, probably no more than that. Certainly fewer than a million. Most of us have simply lost interest and died, or gone off looking for something . . . else. Only those with a grand obsession or a . . . a good hobby, remain. I believe there are several thousand inhabited star systems in the Realms. There used to be. It is hard to keep track and there is little contact between them except when a Guardian becomes restless.”
Several thousand inhabited star systems? The room moved around Sam for a moment. He took a breath and went on.
“The New People spokesman called the Guardian we were to meet The Eye of P’Daan and you just mentioned P’Daan as well. Who is P’Daan? Is he the one who gave the orders for the massacre?”
She did another one of her neck stretching motions and then ruffled her neck feathers with the fingers of both hands.
“P’Daan came here along with M’Eetos and engineered this system; They are its patrons, its creators. M’Eetos left some time ago, and P’Daan left later, but he intends to come back. He left P’Moze in his place, to serve as his eye. That is when P’Moze took the name The Eye of P’Daan. Well, that must be obvious. Are you going to torture me?”
Torture? Why was everyone fixated on torture? Did he really look like someone who would resort to it? Oddly, she had asked this last question without fear, with nothing but curiosity.
“Have you ever been tortured?”
“Not that I remember,” she said.
“I think you’d remember if you had.”
She just looked at him and he had the feeling what he had just said was foolish. Remember it? For how long would she remember? A thousand years? Ten thousand? Ten million?
Sam didn’t know if he should believe her story about not remembering very much, but as he thought about it, it made sense. Maybe they lived forever, barring accident or violence, and they never aged, but their brain was still just a kilo and a half or two of meat. How much did Sam remember of his early childhood? A few confused images, some scenes he wasn’t even certain the order of any more. And that was only thirty years ago. If he lived to be a hundred, what would he remember? What if he lived to be a thousand?
“No, Te’Anna, I do not intend to torture you.”
He had no way of knowing what any of her nonverbal behaviors meant, but he had the sense his answer disappointed her. When she said she was very bored, he thought, she wasn’t kidding.
“You must keep some records of your personal history,” he said, “or the history of your species, your civilization.”
“Yes, we have histories,” she said. “I cannot remember the last time I was interested in reading them. They just repeat the same things over and over, endlessly. It is hard to concentrate on them, or even take them very seriously. My own history is encoded in a data-storage organism in P’Daan’s palace complex. If we ever return there, I will let you view as much of it as you like. I think it is good I do not remember more. Think how even more boring life would be if I could remember all the things I have done over and over and over, for centuries. Why would I ever do anything more?”
The thought made Sam shudder. The idea of living forever but not being able to remember it had at first struck him as a raw deal, but now he realized the alternative was infinitely worse. To live forever but remember everything you had ever seen, felt, said, thought, or done would soon reduce existence to nothing but endless, pointless repetition. Even with her memory limited, it was no wonder this creature’s life had come down to a near-suicidal quest for novelty—any novelty, even torture. How many times, he wondered, had boredom driven her to seek out torture? And how many times through the millennia had she been tortured and then forgotten it?
“I appreciate the offer of access to your personal history,” he said, “but I’m afraid I won’t be able to accept. We destroyed the palace complex under where the meeting took place.”
“Destroyed it?” she said. “I find that hard to believe. It is heavily protected.”
“Well, not heavily enough. We have an orbital bombardment weapon designed to penetrate deep, armored complexes. To my knowledge this was only the third time it was ever used in combat. It was . . . effective. If you like I can show you the before and after deep radar imagery.”
“But the Eye of P’Daan was there,” she said.
“Yes, and the two other Guardians that were with you. It does not appear that anyone in the complex survived. I know this must come as a terrible shock.”
“You killed three Guardians? I cannot remember anyone ever killing a single Guardian . . . ever. I cannot remember ever hearing of such a thing and I have no idea how any of the other Guardians will react to this. Or how the New People will react, for that matter. They may not have understood that we even can die. Oh, Bitka . . . you people . . . are more interesting than I ever dared hope!”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Five days later, aboard USS Cam Ranh Bay, running dark,
outbound to Destie-Seven
18 April 2134 (sixty-one days after Incident Seventeen)
Loptoon Haykuz sat in his stateroom and watched the incoming comm light flash on and off, on and off. For the eleven days since the catastrophe on Destie-Four and the death of the envoy e-Lisyss and the rest of the landing party, Haykuz had remained locked in his stateroom, opening his door only for the stewards who delivered his meals. He had powered down his embedded commlink. There was no one here he wanted to talk to. The humans had not disturbed him at first because they understood grief.
Grief had nothing to do with this, however. Haykuz had hated e-Lisyss, loathed everything about him: his studied arrogance and casual ignorance, his narrowness of interests and yet his continued success and mounting prestige. Were the only requirements for success a confident assumption of superiority and a willingness to bludgeon anyone who did not immediately acquiesce? They were certainly the only capacities Haykuz had seen in the envoy e-Lisyss, his superior.
His superior. Haykuz hated him for that as well, not just his automatic assumption of it so much as the reality. E-Lisyss was his superior, in every way, and reminded Haykuz of it periodically, lest it slip his mind. How many careers had Hayk
uz tried and failed at? Nothing seemed to fit him, but it would have embarrassed the family for the second issue of his sire to turn out to be a nothing, especially after his grandsire had died and his sire became patriarch of the extended household. So, place the young Haykuz second-issue with an old associate, a man almost as successful as the departed grandsire, and ask him to keep the ne’er-do-well in line. Maybe make something of him, although Haykuz did not think anyone had any extravagant expectations in that regard.
The comm light continued to blink. He would say he was lying down, that he did not see it. He had taken a sleeping drug and so did not hear the occasional beeps. He knew what it was, knew what it had to be.
Oh, if only e-Lisyss had lived! Then the catastrophe about to engulf and possibly consume his family, the Varoki, every intelligent species in the Cottohazz would have been the envoy’s fault. Wasn’t it bad enough Haykuz was going to die along with everyone else on this awful ship? Did he have to die knowing it was now his responsibility to avert the extinction of his species, and that once again he would fail? Fail one last spectacular time.
And of course, he would. Of course, because they were not wrong about him. Of all the Varoki on this ship to become the highest surviving official representative of the Cottohazz executive council, why him?
The comm light continued to blink.
He squinted and powered up his commlink. The ID tag for Captain Bitka appeared—Captain Bitka, who saw through Haykuz’s mask of officiousness to the weakling behind it, and had done so without even having to try hard. He opened the link to his new tormenter.
“Yes, Captain.”
“Mister Haykuz. I want you to know that, even though there were very real differences between us, I deeply regret the death of Envoy e-Lisyss. All of us have lost friends and shipmates. I won’t say I know how you feel, but you have my sympathy.”
“Thank you, Captain. I myself must apologize for not communicating with you sooner following the incident. We are in some peril and although I do not know how useful my assistance can be, I owe it to you and everyone else on board to at least offer it.”
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